One of the most eye opening moments in my music career was when I learned about subtractive equalization. The basic premise being that taking away sound, is always better than adding sound.

The human ear can only ear a specific frequency range of sound, and speakers can only produce an even smaller frequency range. If you combine that with dynamics of sound, volumes, and distortion, you have a very limited ‘space’ to fit your music into. One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced engineers and producers make, is they constantly boost elements of their track. They’ll crank up their kick drum, then they crank up their snare, then they crank up their lead, then the bass, then the hats, then everything is shouting in a big distorted cacophony. With subtractive EQ, you sculpt away sections of the different sounds that overlap.

For example, typically when writing trance I’ll start with the kick and bassline relationship. Usually, I’ll start to cut out sub bass frequencies from my bassline starting around 150hz. That way, the sub bass from the kick drum doesn’t become muddied if it overlaps with the bassline. I’ll then, notch out an are from the kickdrum, around 300hz, so that the bassline has an area of the sound spectrum to have dominance.

I follow this approach as I build the rest of the song, and then depending on the part of the song, increase or decrease volume of key elements. That allows for me to guide the listener to focus on certain elements and different points of the song.

The same methodology can be applied in other areas of life.

For example, in my other creative outlet, art direction and design. One of the most important things to get a client to come to the understanding of, is what they are really trying to achieve with their campaign. Identification of goals of the business owner, and then identifying the goals of the audience, helps to inform a point of convergence that can dictate key messaging.

That is all fine and dandy, but somewhere down the road, the concept gets shown to a stakeholder at an organization who inserts their own feedback. The concept then gets shown to someone else, and another person, and another person. Suddenly, your very focused message, has additional things that you need to communicate.

I try to head that off from the beginning. Typically, using the analogy of subtractive equalization. Or by asking them to imagine they are in a room, and everyone is shouting. Sure the volume is loud, but they can’t hear anything.

The more you add, the more you take away. And the more you take away, the more you add.